


Deal

by Aethelar



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (character deaths are kinda minor and glossed over but also kinda important?), Dark Stiles, Gen, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Unreliable Narrator, leading swiftly to, this is not necessarily a good thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 12:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8577892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: The first time he does it is to save Scott.
 Magic comes with a price and a metric shit ton of risks, but Stiles has never been the sort of person to let that stop him.





	

The first time he does it is to save Scott.

He shouldn’t have needed to. It shouldn’t have got that far – the plan should have worked, _Scott should have come back_. Stiles digs his fingers into his scalp, fighting for a grip on his too short hair, and screams all of this at Derek until Derek roars at him, teeth bared and eyes flaring ice-blue. The movement reopens the scabbed wound on his head and it bleeds like only a head wound can, a fresh wave of red down Derek's temple. Stiles has seen too much blood. He’s seen his own blood, seen Lydia’s blood and Allison’s blood and Scott’s blood, so much of Scott’s blood from claw wounds and bite wounds and running down his arms and staining his shirt and floating in crimson tendrils through the water as Scott sank beneath it and his breath catches because Scott was hurt and Scott heals, but what if this time he didn’t and what if this time he won’t and what if he never comes back and never comes back and what if Scott never comes back –

Lydia shakes him, shouting his name over and over, and it helps, a little. He sinks to the floor and tries to remember how to breathe. _We’ll find him_ , Allison promises, face grim and one hand straying to the knife hidden in her boot. Stiles stares past her at the huddle of werewolves and doesn’t say that wolves can’t track a scent through water, and if Scott could come back himself then he already would have.

They go out looking anyway, fanning out either side of the river and straining their eyes for a glimpse of Stiles’ missing best friend. Stiles and Lydia are left behind, watching the phones and waiting for Scott to drag himself back (because he’s strong, they said, he’ll have healed, he won’t have drowned).

Stiles goes to Scott’s house to get a change of clothes for him, and on the way back he finds himself in the vet clinic. Deaton’s not there but his books are, and it only takes a few minutes for him to find what he needs.

“I want to make a deal,” he tells the spirits, and drops a match into the bowl of bloodied herbs to make sure they listen. It flares once, brilliant and white, and the smoke drifts up and curls around him in a lazy spiral.

_Are you certain, little witch?_

Stiles flinches, screwing his eyes shut and covering his ears against the rasping, shrieking, hissing voices.

_Does the little witch know the price?_

“Memories.” He squares his shoulders and grips the hem of his shirt to keep his hand still. “I trade my memories for Scott. Alive, unharmed – properly Scott, not just his body, or not Scott that’s going to die again, just Scott, no tricks.”

_No tricks,_ the spirits agree . The smoke glows for a second, pressing in hard around Stiles’ neck almost enough to burn him – and then it’s gone. Fire flows into Stiles, power crackling beneath his skin and he can _feel_ Scott, can see and touch and smell his body tangled limp and drowned in the shadow of a willow tree.

“Scott,” he breathes, and the fire flows out of him. Scott twitches, hand rising to thrash against the roots and push himself to the surface. Stiles’ vision fades, but it’s ok, it’s ok, because Scott’s alive and he’s coming back. He’s coming back.

He rinses the ashes of his summoning spell down the sink and gathers the bundle of clothes. Opens the windows to air out the smell, rearranges the books on the shelf to disguise that one is missing. On the drive back to Derek’s loft where Lydia is waiting, he runs through his memories and wonders what he no longer remembers, what he traded for Scott. Whatever it was, it was worth it.

 

He tells no one about the magic. Somehow, he doesn’t think they’ll approve (highly hypocritical if you ask him – they’ve got fangs and claws, or supersonic screams that tap into the undead radio, or a freaky ability to wield pointy objects to deadly affect; did they really think his sarcasm was going to protect him forever?) and Deaton’s book, when he has the time to properly read it, is full of dire warnings and grim predictions.

Witches are bad. Humans aren’t meant to have magic; it comes at a price, and the more Stiles’ uses it, the more he’ll have to pay. It’s like an addiction, Deaton says when Stiles asks him (theoretically speaking – not that he’d ever use it – just wondering if witches are real and do they ride broomsticks, because that would totally be awesome, he’s just saying). The more you use magic, the more of yourself you lose until the loss drives you mad and more magic is the only thing that numbs the pain. A witch, a full witch who’s traded all of themselves for magic and power, is less human even than a werewolf is and far more dangerous to everyone around them.

Stiles isn’t stupid. He’s a long way from being a witch, and he plans to keep it that way. One spell won’t kill him – he doesn’t even miss the memories, can’t even tell what they were! And he’s never going to call the spirits back, so it’s not like there’s even an issue. It was luck that all the ingredients were there anyway; it’s not like he keeps althaea root and dittany in his kitchen, and Deaton would get suspicious if Stiles raided his stock again.

Except that he doesn’t need to summon them. The next time Stiles is in danger – which, let’s face it, happens far too often to be comfortable – they just… appear. Or not even that; just a voice, a whisper in his mind he hears when he’s running, hands pressed against the stitch in his side and the roar of an overpowered motorbike engine too close behind him.

_Do you want to escape?_

He scrambles around a corner, feet almost skidding out from underneath him, and trips into a chicken wire fence. There’s a door but it’s padlocked and as he scrabbles with it desperately he hears the engine subside to a low growl as the alpha dismounts and stalks towards him.

“Yes, escape, anywhere but here – God, please,” he gasps, and there’s fire in his veins and reflected in the alpha’s red eyes –

\- he staggers into the road and takes off running again before he can process it, feet slapping against the tarmac and heart hammering in his chest until he recognises the street as his street, his drive, his front door.

He slams it behind him and doesn’t think about the magic or what he paid for it this time.

 

The third time, he’s with Scott again. They’re in chains, hanging from the wall in some hunter’s basement (not the Argents, for once; some nutjobs who were tracking an omega, then decided that the resident hunters were clearly slacking in their job and that torturing Stiles and Scott for information was the best way to take down the pack). Scott’s been howling until his throat is ragged, but they’ve heard nothing from the rest of the pack, and if Stiles doesn’t get them out soon then he’s convinced the hunters will lose patience and kill someone.

The rush of fire is almost familiar, almost comforting, and the sound of the cuffs clicking open is music to his ears.

“How did you… ?” Scott asks groggily, massaging the feeling back to his hands. Stiles grins, a touch too wide, a touch too manic to be truthful.

“I’m awesome,” he says, and collapses when he tries to step forwards. Scott grabs him before he can hit the ground, swinging Stiles’ arm over his shoulder and gripping his waist to support him. “You’re awesome too,” Stiles mumbles around the sudden rush of dizziness, his grin settling into something infinitely fonder and more genuine.

“Save it for after I bust us out of here,” Scott says, but there’s something worried behind his tone that Stiles doesn’t want to think about. Luckily, his body chooses that moment to give up on him completely and he faints before he has to.

The last thought he has before he blacked out was that he hadn't even heard their voices.

 

He doesn't keep track after that. He tries, at first, but it's hard - he's not performing a ritual and he's not making a bargain, he's just using what he has to fix things that need to be fixed.

Lydia's screaming, her leg bent at an awkward angle with the bone of her shin shining white through the blood. She'll never walk on it, let alone run, and they haven't the time to hobble. Stiles fixes it, adjusts her memories to remove it entirely, and they survive.

Alison's possessed, eyes white and staring as she raises her bow to shoot. Scott won't move - just stands there, begging, pleading, willing her to fight back and regain control of herself. Stiles fixes it, Alison blinks, and they survive again.

Something's eating people. It leaves them in alleyways and dark corners, dried out husks like mummies that break and snap and dissolve into dust on the wind. It hides; they can't find it. They know what it is and they know how to stop it, but it laughs at them from two steps in front or one step to the side and kills again. Stiles fixes it, the creature stumbles, and Isaac plunges an olive-wood stake through its shadow-stained heart.

On some level he knows he shouldn't, but on all other levels, why not? If he didn't, people would die. He checks his memories with a feverish obsession; he's filled notebooks of the things it's important never to forget. He reads through them regularly (he has a schedule and post it notes hidden in his favorite video games in case he forgets the notebooks exist). Nothing goes missing, nothing that matters.

 

Then there's Thanksgiving, with Dad and Scott and Melissa, and Melissa and his dad flirt over peas and mashed potatoes.

"Do you reckon they'll ever get back together?" he asks his brother (half brother; Scott has a different dad, Stiles remembers, though he's never met the man).

"Back together?" Scott asks, trying to raise one eyebrow and raising both instead. He looks comically confused, nose wrinkled and fork delicately poised over his plate.

"Mum and Dad," he clarifies.

"Stop making designs on my mum," Scott snorts. Doubt flickers in Stiles' chest, but now isn't the time to ask.

Later, he flicks through his notebooks, trying to work it out. Melissa is the only mother he's ever known, the only mother he's ever had, isn't she? He hasn't written it down, but she's his _mother_. He wouldn't get that wrong. He wouldn't.

But there's more things. There's joking references to Stiles's Ten Year Plan (for what? World domination?) that he doesn't get, a classmate he's never met that calls him by name. There's clothes he doesn't remember buying, a high score in a game he doesn't remember ever playing before, a damn recipe that he gets halfway through cooking before he realises he doesn't know the rest of the steps.

The recipe makes him stop. The recipe makes him worried. There's memory of knowledge and there's memory of events, and they're stored in different parts of the brain. Aren't they? Something like that. Semantic and episodic, two different memories (he went on a mad research binge once and he can't remember why but he still remembers that). Even if he forgets things that have happened, he shouldn't forget things he's learnt. He can't afford to.

He hasn't checked his notebooks for a while. He flicks through them, jerky and manic. He knows everything that's in them, knows it by heart. But he forgot a recipe. Half a recipe even, how unfair is that, and that's semantic knowledge that shouldn't have been lost. He wonders if he should be cautious with his magic.

The thought aches, but he's not addicted, nowhere close. He's just used to the comforting hum of warmth in his blood, that's all.

He doesn't cast a single spell for the next four days, until some damn fool tries to bring a haunted portrait through his wards. He takes the man down with his dad's gun, fire boiling against his skin and fighting against his control. It hurts to keep it leashed. He checks the body and inspects the painting but he doesn't have the ingredients for a exorcism. He could wait, could try and think of a way to steal them. Or. He could set the fucker on fire, and that's just one spell, it's not like it's going to cause a problem, he only needs a touch of magic in there to make sure the ghost is bound to its canvas.

The fire feels like freedom.

He traces the path of his wards curiously. They encircle the whole town; trip wires, proximity alerts, early warning systems. They thrum with his power, dormant but waiting. He doesn't remember casting them. He doesn't remember learning how to cast them, but he has and he did and they're using his magic every time something vaguely threatening enters his territory. They're burning memories just by existing and he doesn't know how to take them down.

He goes home unsettled. The unease stays with him overnight; come morning, he's jumpy enough that he spends three hours smearing his blood in a careful circle around the house and raising the strongest protections he knows how. There's a vague thought that he's forgotten something, that raising the new wards is a bad idea, but they're structurally sound and it makes sense to protect himself with everything he has. Doesn't it? He chalks the doubt up to the paranoia and keeps going.

 

The first monster he kills in front of the pack is, ironically, a witch. She's corrupt and insane but her magic is strong; it tastes like ice against Stiles' tongue. She's not strong enough and she burns all the same, her bitter power a brief respite from the constant hunger of Stiles' flames. He feels oddly cheated; it was an easy win. Boring.

The pack stare at him like he's a stranger, someone dangerous and new. Not boring. Interesting.

Not interesting for long; their questions are repetitive and banally stupid.

"I'm Stiles," he repeats for the seventh time. "I'm not possessed. I'm not an impostor. Twits. I'm _me_. Fuck's sake."

"The magic!" Scott protests and Stiles rolls his eyes.

"I've always had magic," he dismisses. And when they press, when they asks about spirits and deals and summonings, he grows irritated. "Did it look like I summoned a bunch of spirits and made a deal with them?" he scoffs. Lights the rope around his wrists on fire to demonstrate that his magic is his own, creates a trio of glowing lights to hover over his palms and holds them in front of the pack's horrified faces - "Does this look like faery magic? It's mine."

They aren't convinced. Not fully. He answers a disturbing litany of questions to prove that he's still who he says he is and hasn't forgotten anything important, but it's a simple matter to pull the answers they want to hear out of their minds and parrot the words back.

"My friends are illogical," he tells his landlord later. "How the fuck should I know how Lydia saved her douchy ex boyfriend or why Growly mcEyebrows hates his uncle?"

"Language, Stiles," the man reprimands, and Stiles sticks his tongue out at him. The Sheriff is a decent enough guy, but Stiles doesn't need mothering.

Not that the pack respect the lack of need for mothering. They - the only word for is it that they _hover_ , as though they're afraid he'll do something mad with his 'newfound powers'. Please. It's enough to make him cry. They stick him with a curly haired, wide eyed _babysitter_ who Stiles is apparently meant to know but has never bothered to pay attention to before. The pack has too many people in it and it's a time consuming waste to be friendly to them all. Stiles regrets ever sharing territory with them. He entertains the notion briefly of driving them out, but it's handy to have some teeth and claws around when he needs them.

After three hours, the babysitter wolf works out that Stiles doesn't know his name and hasn't deigned to notice anything about him in the however many years they've worked together. The betrayal and sorrow pouring off him is sickening, and the promise of enlisting the rest of the pack to 'help' is just laughable. Stiles is surrounded by morons who expect him to care; he doesn't see how the pack can help with that except to bugger off and leave him alone.

But the wolf won't shut up about it and Stiles doesn't particularly want to face Inquisition Part Two when they meet up with the pack again, so he hits him with a mind-control whammy while his back is turned. He even remembers to cast a glamour over the puppy's eyes to disguise the blank whiteness of them.

It was only meant to be a temporary thing, just a way out of an annoying conversation, but it proves useful having the wolf at his beck and call. It's not hurting him to maintain the spell; he may as well keep it going a bit longer.

And when the next wolf gets a bit too nosy and bit too insistent, there's an easy tried and true method of keeping things how Stiles likes them and the mind control stretches well enough to cover two. Pack mentality; the instinctive obedience to the alpha figure makes the wolves already predisposed to being controlled. He pats Growly on his dark head with something almost like fondness and sends him out to join Curly in a new life of blissful servitude.

There's a set of notebooks spread out on his bed when he gets home. They've obviously been placed there - how stupid do the wolves think he is? - but he's feeling in an obliging mood so he picks one at random and flicks through the pages.

He doesn't get far. They're filled with a saccharine devotion to the pack alpha that makes him want to laugh. The blatant warnings throughout the book of 'losing himself' and 'becoming a threat to his friends' are obvious, ham-handed manipulation. He wonders which of the pack set this up; it seems a step beyond the almighty alpha, but too clumsy for the banshee. He burns the rest of the notebooks without bothering to read them.

That, apparently, was the wrong thing to do. The alpha becomes insistent, alternatively pleading and commanding, trying to throw weight behind his words as though Stiles were a recalcitrant beta - and that, that's too far. Stiles has tolerated the pack in his territory. He's even helped them. But he is not one of them, and he's not subservient to their alpha. He doesn't do  _subservient_. He's the one that people should be subservient  _to_.

Stiles is too angry to cast a spell; his magic lashes forwards like something alive. The alpha burns. (Something in Stiles burns with him, but his magic is blazing too loudly for him to notice, and he's too angry to care either way).

For a second, the pack bonds hang in the air and Stiles contemplates finishing the job and clearing the whole house out, but only for a second. Wolves are useful things when they're properly leashed. He gathers them in his magic and secures himself as the new alpha, flooding each bond with his own brand of mind control, fine tuned from the months spent with two of the betas under his command.

The hunter girl fights him. He bears down on her and she shields herself with, of all things, a spark of his own magic. It's old and rough, probably stolen, but it's deep seated and unwilling to obey him. No matter. He sets it on fire and breaks her mind from within; he's never liked hunters much anyway. Zombie suits her better.

The new bonds settle in his mind. He leaves the town to meet up with them in the forest and doesn't bother coming back; he's outgrown living somewhere so bland anyway. He feels like a castle kind of guy, or maybe a mansion with a secret underground cave and a snarky butler.

He doesn't exactly have the funds for a castle yet, but he's got all the magic he can use and a personal attack squad of werewolf minions. Funds shouldn't be too hard to acquire.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr! Come find me at [aethelar.tumblr.com](http://aethelar.tumblr.com)


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